Critical Thinking 10: False Dichotomy. The false dichotomy (also known as false dilemma, or restricting the options) is a recognised fallacy that also has an obvious and close relationship with the Middle Way. A false dichotomy assumes that a judgement that is incremental (shades of grey) is absolute (black and white). However, the issue it raises is that of how we can tell false dichotomies from true ones. Is anything black and white?

False Dilemma (also called false dichotomy, false binary, black-and-white thinking, bifurcation, denying a conjunct, the either–or fallacy, fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses, the fallacy of false choice, or the fallacy of the false alternative) is a type of informal fallacy that involves a situation in which only limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option. The opposite of this fallacy is argument to moderation.